But Internet freedom advocates need to get specific about their reform agenda.

On Monday, a broad coalition of public interest groups and Internet leaders issued a document they called the Declaration of Internet Freedom. Signatories included the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Mozilla Foundation, and dozens of others.

"We stand for a free and open Internet," the statement reads. "We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles." Those principles are:

Expression: Don't censor the Internet.Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create, and innovate.Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users' actions.Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.

If this seems vague, that was by design. "The principles were drafted intentionally to be as high-level as possible," said Josh Levy of Free Press during a Monday conference call. "It's not proposing any specific policies. Instead, it's meant to put a line in the sand about what things should look like."

Levy said he planned to begin organizing local meetups to discuss the principles and make plans to promote them to members of Congress.

Mike Masnick of Techdirt also participated in the call. He emphasized that the principles are designed to be broad enough that people across the political spectrum can embrace them. "This is a very non-partisan effort," he said. Indeed, he pointed out, Internet freedom issues "don't really fall along partisan lines for the most part."

The declaration was spearheaded primarily by liberal groups like Free Press. But it also enjoyed support from conservatives like Republican political strategist Patrick Ruffini and National Review blogger Reihan Salam. The pair encouraged Republicans to oppose legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act.

"It makes sense for conservatives to engage in Internet issues more deeply because this is an area of growth for free market ideals," Ruffini told us in an e-mail. "As people live more and more of their lives in a relatively unregulated online space, we can slowly but subtly begin to shift the balance away from areas of the economy the government can control, to areas it can't."

But not everyone was enthusiastic about the declaration. Indeed, a coalition of right-of-center organizations promoted an alternative declaration that focused on a slightly different set of principles, including "humility" and "the rule of law." The groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, TechFreedom, and the National Taxpayers Union, worried that the original declaration contained an "ambiguity that could pave the way for more government intervention" in the future.

Actions speak louder than words

Truthfully, it's hard to see much disagreement between the two declarations. Both sides agree on the importance of free expression, innovation, and privacy. While they likely disagree about the details of how those ideas should be put in practice, there ought to be plenty of room to focus on areas of consensus like opposing Internet censorship.

The real problem with both declarations is that they're so vague that it's hard to imagine they'll spur changes in public policy. No member of Congress is going to come out against free speech or innovation, any more than they're going to declare their antipathy toward puppies or the American flag. Lobbying members of Congress to agree to abstract principles likely won't prevent Congress from enacting concrete bills that threaten these values.

Achieving actual changes to public policy requires focused political pressure. For example, in January, millions of Internet users worked together to kill two specific pieces of legislation that would lead to Internet censorship. Hence, to have a real effect on public policy, these declarations of principles need to be translated into concrete policy proposals that Internet users can lobby public officials to support.

A good example of this is a new campaign by declaration signer Demand Progress. Titled "the Internet vs. Hollywood," it points out that the seizure powers the government has asserted in the Megaupload case could in the future be turned against more mainstream services Web services like Gmail and Flickr. Demand Progress is filing an amicus brief with the Virginia judge who is hearing the Megaupload case, and has collected more than 50,000 signatures in support of that brief.

Of course fixing that problem will require legislation—specifically, reforming the 2008 PRO-IP Act that authorized the federal government to seize domains, servers, and other property in copyright cases. A specific reform bill might not attract quite as much support as an abstract statement of principles. But it would have a much greater chance of actually enhancing Internet freedom.

25 Reader Comments

Once we allowed the government to not only pass but repetedly renew things like the Patriot Act I feel like declarations such as this were made the equivalent of memes. It'll sound nice and look good in a few retweets, and accomplish nothing. Also as long as your internet is provided by a corporation, your opinion will mean lot less than those of other businesses like big media companies.

Also as long as your internet is provided by a corporation, your opinion will mean lot less than those of other businesses like big media companies.

So what do we do? Set up a free network? Point to point nodes using, oh, maybe, IR lasers or something? You can do all sorts of darknets and encrypted tunneling or whatnot, but what many people seem to speak of as net freedom would require completely independent hardware in a vast cooperative network. I'm a hardware guy. I'm willing to entertain ideas.

Also as long as your internet is provided by a corporation, your opinion will mean lot less than those of other businesses like big media companies.

So what do we do? Set up a free network? Point to point nodes using, oh, maybe, IR lasers or something? You can do all sorts of darknets and encrypted tunneling or whatnot, but what many people seem to speak of as net freedom would require completely independent hardware in a vast cooperative network. I'm a hardware guy. I'm willing to entertain ideas.

Everything you're talking about is the equivalent of a large-scale pirate radio, which leads me to think it wouldn't work.

Define irony: people usually backing "Rule of Law" and political correctness are typically liberals, and those asking for free market regulation, smaller government, and lasseiz-faire corporate operation are typically conservatives.

If they want to follow "The Rule of Law", which law do they mean? That of China? Pakistan? The U.K.? Censorship is a lot stronger in other countries, be it directly from the government or indirectly via being able to easily sue on the basis of defamation.

The best reason to say that "the Internet is American" is because the Rule of Law that the Internet has followed to-date is centered on the most uniquely American law and value: the Freedom of Speech. It should not be taken for granted that the Internet gives more people a louder voice more efficiently than anything else in human history, but will only continue to do so if those who tend to the Internet continue to fight off censorship.

A practical start would be to develop some very-easy-to-use strong encryption tools for everyone with enough ability to sign on to the internet.

An effective email encryption package or plug-in would help a lot. It would have to operate entirely in the background, without demanding that the user learn to deal with keys. It would have to be end-to-end with no intermediary in on the encryption. I can deal with a more complicated tool, but this is useless to me if those I communicate with cannot.

There is no reason most people's email should not be automatically encrypted whenever communicating with a corespondent who also has the same encryption/decryption capability. Even if local keys were vulnerable to an intruder taking over one person's computer, widespread use of encryption would ensure that email, at least, would be mostly private and secure.

Every step toward making strong encryption more widely used will make the internet more private and more resistant to censorship.

Define irony: people usually backing "Rule of Law" and political correctness are typically liberals, and those asking for free market regulation, smaller government, and lasseiz-faire corporate operation are typically conservatives.

Funny how the Internet turns everything on its head.

I'm not sure where political correctness came in to this, but "rule of law" as a catch phrase is used and trumpeted by both sides. They're constantly racing each other to see who can be harder on crime, etc.

If they want to follow "The Rule of Law", which law do they mean? That of China? Pakistan? The U.K.? Censorship is a lot stronger in other countries, be it directly from the government or indirectly via being able to easily sue on the basis of defamation.

The best reason to say that "the Internet is American" is because the Rule of Law that the Internet has followed to-date is centered on the most uniquely American law and value: the Freedom of Speech. It should not be taken for granted that the Internet gives more people a louder voice more efficiently than anything else in human history, but will only continue to do so if those who tend to the Internet continue to fight off censorship.

</soapbox>

That declaration doesn't seem to be saying that they are pushing for rule of law, but rather, how rule of law should be applied to the internet. Their interpretation seems to pretty much be as little as needed, and as narrowly as possible. They seem to be concerned about AUTHORITIES ignoring the rule of law, such as due process.

If you support this declaration, shouldn't you give these people [the "broad coalition of public interest groups"] first choice when buying or using services (connection, software, search etc.), only moving to other providers if you can't get what you want from the signatories?

Ugh... The IP stuff is going to ruin everything. I'm entirely in favour of defining and IP regime so long as it sticks to its purpose of encouraging creation and innovation. But if we have to wreck the openness of the internet or go all Police state on the world to get there, then I'm sorry, IP will have to go.

Ugh... The IP stuff is going to ruin everything. I'm entirely in favour of defining and IP regime so long as it sticks to its purpose of encouraging creation and innovation. But if we have to wreck the openness of the internet or go all Police state on the world to get there, then I'm sorry, IP will have to go.

I have tried to think up ways to break the locks and absolute control mechanisms of a monopolistic IP system.

Heres my lasted droolings.

A new idea came to the quagmire in my head.

Frist off all IP once sold or used by the IP creator for profit or to generate a significant revenue is forced into a profit sharing license where anyone who uses that IP must give 60% of revenue generated by that IP to the IP owner.

This covers patents as well as copy right, if it’s not “shared” in this sense it’s not protected by law.

Money still flows to the most creative and those who can optimize both customer service and profit will reap the greatest rewards, unlike now where you have stifling monopolies..

Though the only downside I can see is it does not remove enough lawyers from the equation.

Seems vague. Serious question: If protecting IP on the net is 'censorship' then to maintain fairness off the net - do ALL copyright laws need revoking? Books, car designs, drug formulas etc...

I doubt they are taking such a strong viewpoint as to oppose any and all copyright enforcement on the internet, but rather, that it should take a back seat to more important things, and they should take a more nuanced response. One thing to note is that copyright infringement tends to crop up on sites and services that are innovative or channels of communication that are resistant to censorship and thus protect the most vital areas of free speech. For example, Wikileaks and other dissenting groups have made wide use of bittorrent and The Pirate Bay to disseminate information.

But yes, copyright is censorship, and the first iteration of copyright was the most despicable kind that existed for squashing dissent. The modern variant is still censorship, but of a kind that can theoretically be socially justified by giving us more value than it costs us. Of course, that must be tightly monitored to have even a slight chance of producing a net benefit. If rightsholders wish to maintain this system, they should be especially careful that it doesn't overstep it's bounds, or else revocation will undoubtedly become the just course of action.

Also, drug formulas are not copyrighted but rather patented, and the copyright protection for a car's design is practically non-existent save for sabre rattling and intimidation.

"No member of Congress is going to come out against free speech or innovation, any more than they're going to declare their antipathy toward puppies or the American flag."

This.

It's just so vague... it's like the writers of it just took all of what they feel threatened by and summarized it in a few catchy, easy-to-tweet bullet points to try and maintain the status quo.

Saying you're protecting free speech and innovation is so last January. They may have well just said that they like to eat food or going for walks on the beach.

I'd just like to see more respect for creators' rights, I guess. All this stuff they're pushing for has already been happening on the internet since its inception, and using alarmist statements to say that new laws will "break the internet" is just as abusive as the shit that major labels have done to musicians over the years.

There's an agenda behind these vague statements, just as much as any shit spilling out of politicians' mouths.

They need to take a lesson from the MAIFFIAs any most other lobby groups and just write the bill themselves. No one in Congress writes a bill from scratch anymore. Too much work and too little time after campaign fundraising...

I believe that the declaration was deliberately vague so that everyone has a common ground to build from. The variety of people on the internet demands vagueness, because beyond a few core words everyone's implementation will inherently disagree. Just consider the variety of opinions in this comment thread alone, and we're on a fairly niche site to begin with. With core ideas in mind, building out into specific actions and then being able to reference back to how they apply to the core ideas will be much easier.

Furthermore, I would say one of the weaknesses of communicating The Will of the Internet is we had no quick buzzwords/credo to reference back to, aside from Freedom. Now when some ignorant piece of legislation (or hopefully, a good piece) shows up, people can reference where it fails (or succeeds), and build the trail out from there.

Once we allowed the government to not only pass but repetedly renew things like the Patriot Act I feel like declarations such as this were made the equivalent of memes. It'll sound nice and look good in a few retweets, and accomplish nothing. Also as long as your internet is provided by a corporation, your opinion will mean lot less than those of other businesses like big media companies.

Cute though I guess.

I have to agree. Government created viruses like flame and stux show just how far a government is willing to go to control others. This will be no different. Back to usenet for the real users I guess.

I have a lazy answer, donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation Inc. for all your online angst.GuideStar (organization that gathers information about charities) rates the EFF thusly:

GuideStar Seal..........Organization does not have a GuideStar Exchange SealRegistered with IRS...Legitimacy information is availableFinancial Data...........Annual Revenue and Expense data reportedForms 990................2010, 2009, and 2008 Forms 990 filed with the IRSMission Objectives....Mission Statement is availableImpact Statement......Impact Statement is not available

"No member of Congress is going to come out against free speech or innovation, any more than they're going to declare their antipathy toward puppies or the American flag."

This.

It's just so vague... it's like the writers of it just took all of what they feel threatened by and summarized it in a few catchy, easy-to-tweet bullet points to try and maintain the status quo.

Saying you're protecting free speech and innovation is so last January. They may have well just said that they like to eat food or going for walks on the beach.

I'd just like to see more respect for creators' rights, I guess. All this stuff they're pushing for has already been happening on the internet since its inception, and using alarmist statements to say that new laws will "break the internet" is just as abusive as the shit that major labels have done to musicians over the years.

There's an agenda behind these vague statements, just as much as any shit spilling out of politicians' mouths.

The agenda behind these vague statements is to claim a seat at the table the next time pay-to-play politicians sit down with their corporate pay-pals hoping to determine a strategy for undermining constitutionally protected individual rights & liberties.

You know the old adage; "The devil is in the details!" It's an old adage because it's quite true.

The declaration of internet freedom must be as vague as possible. Every freedom/right/liberty curbed by law is a step down & away from the Perfect World Ideal embodied in these stated generalities; ideals that "everyone" aspires to.

It's an opening statement by freedom of speech, net neutrality, pro-you-me-&-everyone advocates, in which they say to CEO/Politico types: "Hey! Remember the egg you had to wipe off your faces as you retreated from SOPA & PIPA with your tails between your legs? We helped organize all those citizens who sent you packing, & we'd like to talk, constructively, the next time you decide to get together. We understand you have legitimate concerns & here is where we're coming from!"

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

An open, active and free society cannot possibly exist or prosper without empathy for our fellow people and mutual respect for basic rights and privileges. Thus, a healthy internet society must also accept basic rules of the road. Having respect for IP online is just one part of a bigger discussion society should be having on what kind of internet environment we want, as well as digital citizenship.

Timothy B. Lee / Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times.